With an increased density of semiconductor devices of integrated circuits, the accuracy and manufacturing efficiency of a manufacturing process is relatively important. A few errors occurred in the manufacturing process of a semiconductor are likely to lead to the failure of the manufacturing process, causing damage to devices (such as semiconductor or light emitting diode wafers) and consequently consuming a great amount of cost.
Take thermal evaporation as an example, which utilizes a resistor or an electron beam to heat a film-coating material (such as Copper, Cu) in a crucible and evaporate the film-coating material to accomplish thin film deposition, wherein compounds are evaporated through heating and attached to surface of a wafer or a sample.
Taking the cost of film-coating into consideration, a carrier for an evaporator is mostly in a dome shape. Currently a wafer is retrieved by labors in the industry, which demands extra staff training costs. Moreover, with an increased size of the wafer (for example, the size of a light emitting diode wafer has increased to 4-6 inches) and a tendency to thinning the wafer, retrieving the wafer with by labors not only takes a lot of time but also risks damaging the wafer. If a mechanical arm is used for automatic wafer retrieval, the mechanical arm needs a flexible movement capability with high degrees of freedom so as to meet a requirement for arc surface locating, which leads to an increased difficulty and configuration cost in designing the mechanical arm.